Writing: Lost in the Sand

It has been over a month since I last wrote on this site.  I lost a bit of my imagination, creativity, and my characters died.  In short, my class is kicking my ass to the point that I did not want to write anymore.

 

The English language (and classes) have always been tough for me.  To put it in perspective, I think I was getting a better grade in my Spanish class than English class at one point.  The terms change meaning with every sentence, with every placement, and with every speaker and yet I pursue to become a Master at this oddity.  Why?  I am one to take risks, challenge the rules, jump into the deep end of a pool cold turkey, and conquer any of my limitations.  I hate being shoved into a box of structure.  How can I "think freely" if you control how I am to think? 

 

Frustration is my enemy and became an accessory to the murder of my characters (unless I can dig them up from the sand).  My class is/was not going as I desired. My characters became "flat" and "uninteresting" while I mentally began to breakup with them.  That is correct.  I figuratively walked away to let them drop dead.  Sadly, for the sake of the class, I have to revive the zombies.  I asked my professor if he had ever walked up a sand dune:

 

     You start at the bottom of this big hill of sand excited at the thought of reaching the top, but with ever couple steps, you fall back one.  It is annoying, frustrating, and drives a person nuts.  The sun beats upon you as you try different method of climbing by using your hands or digging your feet deeper into the sad until you are a bit exhausted.  You the stop to sit in the sand, which is burning your ass since it was heated by the sun, and try to figure out a new plan of attack. 

 

Well, I told my professor that with this class I was stuck sitting in the sand (and no my bottom is not raw from the burning :P).  After admitting that my characters were dead, my professor advised me to go play in the sandbox.  I do not know if this was intentional or not, but considering the above it made sense.  Maybe I need to add water?  I could try to build a sand castle, but then I might need to add a bucket.  My sand has not become a stone yet, which is why I am performing CPR or just plain resurrecting zombies of my characters.  Is it just me or does everything seem to begin and end with sand here? (sand, sandbox, zombies?)

 

I guess it is time for me to format my sand...

Writing: A Reason to be Greedy

That, my friends, was the title of my post for my current class in the analyzation of why I want to write, why I should write, or what my goals are in writing.  From this heading I received, what I consider, to be a compliment:  "...how could I resist the provocative header...".  Somehow I feel one of those "Go team!" moments we see in movies should happen here, but I'll digress.

I wrote this header based on the idea that writing should start with the writer.  I have all "this" inside that needs to come out in some shape or form of expression and for me it is writing about "this."  Now does that sound completely greedy/selfish?  I have heard that writers should base their writing on their audience, but if I put my audience before myself am I going to be completely honest with you?

I recently told a person that I had to "bite my tongue" during a conversation, which is hard for me, especially when I understand both sides of the conversation all too well.  You ever have those conversations with another person and feel like you are just talking to yourself during a different part of your life, like a past self?  I did, but during the conversation I also realized I had to shut up too.  Saying too much can scare a person and saying too little will not get your point across, but saying just enough provides intrigue that eases into the true intention.  

As I write here, there, and maybe a little bit everywhere like a child with a crayon against a white wall, I realize how harsh I can be knowing that sometimes an audience needs a safety net while others require the "band-aid to be ripped off."  I am a band-aid person (does that not sound weird to anyone else?).  Give me the truth and I will deal with it from there.  I make a choice and deal with the consequences later because if you wait too long the choice is made for you which can be worse than the choice you make for yourself. 

Writing allows me to organize the carousel of thoughts that whiz past my mind constantly.  I have no on/off switch, unless you count taking a frying pan to the head to put me in a coma, but one topic meshes with another topic becoming psychotically no resemblance of the original thought. I mean the title itself is awkward: Writing? Greedy?  How about writing honestly?  

Every time I type one of these entries up or write something for any other purpose the voice of Avril Lavigne enters my head saying "With these things I'll never say."  I write what I would not normally say aloud partially for the reason that there is a time and place for things to be said.  Other times it is because I am ashamed of what I wrote.  Who would read this?  Why would you read it? Or my personal critique on myself (Perfectionist, right here, yoo hoo!), who would read this crap?  I had a rough draft read recently, one that revealed a lot of my opinions towards another person.  Yes, I was a bit ashamed of this draft considering it is one of those pieces where I talk to myself acknowledging "You know better."  To my surprise, I was basically told not to be ashamed of it.  It is not something I want to share revealing, what I view, to be a potential weakness in myself, but within time I may not be as embarrassed about a piece like this in the future.  It takes time.

So in my writing I am greedy.  Some of the greed I share, "gifting, " as my professor puts it, to others while some I keep to myself until it is tolerable beyond just myself.  It is interesting how not everyone can handle the truth and not everyone can handle giving the truth, but writing let's me be honest...or greedy.

Statement of Fear

Today I was thinking about all the different things I could be doing other than being at work, like laundry, dishes, and there was the thought of my statement of purpose for grad school.  It will sound silly to most of you who read this because the piece is required to have 200-500 words explaining 'why me?' for this program.  I will say it also took me awhile to figure out what piece of my personal writing to submit also, which I did find after some inspiration reflecting that I understand fiction and can analyze it.

I still have a little time before my statement of purpose it due, still I am afraid that what I write will not be 'good enough.'  Yes, I will say I am a verbal artist even though for this piece I am utterly...speechless? wordless? artistically useless?  I want to express how every day I wake up wanting to put a pen in my hand and watch the ink bleed into the paper creating an imaginative world with adventures and journeys outside of reality or that I crave the smooth water-like feeling of computer keys against my figures as the words visually create brush strokes with no brush.  How do I express something I am so passionate about that if it does not exist I would feel a part of me died as this if my first thought in the morning and my last thought before I go to bed?  I keep writing this piece to submit over and over because I do not think what I am writing is 'good enough,' even by my own standard, then again I am a perfectionist who fears failure.

This week I realized my statement of purpose is not my only fear in relation to writing.  Winter is among us and my hands hurt to the point of tears, at least lately.  Within the last year I saw a rheumatologist who told me that I have Psoriatic Arthritis, which affects my skin and my joints.  A long time ago, sometime after my siblings and I had lice, I saw a doctor who told me I had Psoriasis, which is a skin disease where my skin cells develop faster than normal that eventually create itchy scaly patches in specific parts of my body.  Psoriasis is an autoimmune disease, meaning my body is basically attacking itself. (Side note from my morbid sense of humor: Could this be considered an uncontrollable type of suicide?-I apologize if that is not funny to you, but I am not a serious persona at heart).  The arthritis that is developed in people who have Psoriasis is also autoimmune mainly in the joints, leaving them swollen and sometimes a bit unmanageable.

Are you wondering why I told you all this yet?  If you must know, I am a very independent person to the point that sometimes I believe it is better to just depend on yourself so that no one else can hurt you or let you down.  With this theory in mind, I am scared that someday my hands will let me down and I will have to be on some form of disability, unable to write or express all the passion I have inside for things in life.  This is my weakness and I am not meant to be weak!  

I understand there are worse things out there, diseases more severe that take away pieces of people, but that does not necessarily make my fear or their fear any different  because these things take away a piece of the people they inhabit.  Now, I feel for those people, I really do, but for the purpose of this entry I am telling my story from my point of view knowing that somewhere someone has similar feelings and they are not alone.  Each moment my fingers grow cold, swell up more than usual, or just become utterly painful I do cry because I am not only losing my fingers, but an entity of me and I have already lost myself once in my lifetime.  That, however, is another story, but I am not going to end this post on a 'woe is me note,' because that is not me.  

I have learned, in the last couple years, that the things we fear the most are the things we want/need the most.  I want to write and I need to write because I cannot... no...I will not let a piece of me die.  So like any other strong person facing an obstacle, I prolong the inevitable as long as I can through the use of medication, keeping my hands warm, exercising regularly to keep my blood flowing properly like I did with my knees, and continue to write what I can.  I guess you could almost compare this to the saying of 'it is better to loved and lost, than to have never loved at all' because as long as I do what I love, I cannot feel lost. (Excuse me, time to warm up the hands :P)